Retail Marketers Are Doubling Down on Millennials and Gen Z

Given the longstanding buzz among marketers about Millennials – and now Gen Z – the headline of this article may seem slightly… stale. But it’s nonetheless interesting to see that retail marketers are (continuing?) to shift their spending away from older generations and to younger ones, according to a report [pdf] from RetailMeNot.

The RetailMeNot study is based on an online survey conducted by Kelton Research among 209 marketing decision-makers who work at organizations that sell products both online and in physical retail locations.

There was vast agreement among respondents that marketing spending will increase this year, with almost 9 in 10 claiming that would be the case for them.

It appears that those budgets will increasingly be targeted at younger generations. Roughly two-thirds of respondents said they would increase their marketing spend targeting Gen Z (65%) and Millennials (68%). By comparison, fewer than half said they’d hike their spending focused on Baby Boomers (45%) and Seniors (38%).

Conversely, roughly one-quarter will be cutting spend focused on Baby Boomers (22%) and Seniors (27%), compared to 13% shrinking their budgets on Millennials and just 5% on Gen Z.

That seems to be well within the prevailing marketing industry trends. But there’s a debate to be had over the effectiveness of this thinking. The attention paid to younger generations – in an effort to tie up their brand loyalty for years to come – seems to stand in contradiction to financial realities.